It’s hard to think of a more innocuous word for most American Jews than “community.” But in France, things aren’t so simple.
Israel\’s Navy intercepted a French ship heading for Gaza, the only member of the pro-Palestinian flotilla to make it to the blockaded waters.
At a glance, the Muslim-Jewish picnic at the peace fountain in Yitzhak Rabin Garden, in this city\’s Bercy Park, looks like a reunion of old friends.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest on Friday as the sexual assault case against him moved one step closer to dismissal after prosecutors told a Manhattan judge that they had serious problems with the case.
Baya Benmahmoud, the heroine of the French film “The Names of Love,” gives new meaning to the concept of political activism. A fervent, if rather naïve, left-winger whose guiding motto is, “Make love, not war,” her mission is to convert right-wing politicians to the correct ideology by sleeping with them. “I am a political whore,” she announces proudly when she meets Arthur Martin, a 40-ish, uptight ornithologist, who rambles on about bird diseases when Baya inquires whether they should make love at his or her place.
The parents of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit have filed a lawsuit asking a French court to determine who is holding their son and to issue an international arrest order. Shalit holds French citizenship, and French law allows for the prosecution of anyone who has committed a serious crime against a French citizen, no matter where they are from.
Joan Nathan says she\’s always had a particular fascination with French Jews and their food. For Nathan, author of \”Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France (Knopf, 2010), the love affair with French cuisine started as a teenager when she made her first trip to France in the 1950s. The prolific cookbook author says the simple pleasure of sampling a slightly melted bar of chocolate sandwiched into a crackly baguette transformed her life.
A 21-year-old student was severely beaten near his synagogue in southern France after acknowledging to his attackers that he was Jewish.
Israeli combat planes pounded the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the worst barrage of rocket attacks on southern Israel in two years. The French news agency AFP and Israel Radio reported repeated strikes on the strip late Monday night. Israel Radio said that there were reports from Palestinian sources of 17 wounded. The army was not responding to the reports, the radio said.
David Saltiel, the head of Greece\’s Jewish community, was honored by France with its highest civil decoration. Saltiel, president of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece and head of the Thessaloniki Jewish community, was awarded the title of the Chevalier of the Order of the Legion of Honor during a ceremony Tuesday at the French Embassy in Athens.
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